I think it is easy to get confused by the following things:
1) I have my values, but they are not completely coherent, and I don’t know their extrapolation. If you ask me about my preference with regards to something I don’t understand yet, I will probably give you a stupid answer. But if I had an opportunity to learn about that thing, to understand it completely, maybe even have some experience with it, I would probably be much more certain about what I want. And luckily, I already have a preference for understanding things, so just give me some more time, please. Also, I already have a preference for having more time. So at least this part of my preferences is coherent. Give me immortality, food, and books, and I will gradually find out what else do I want.
2) I want to find out how things actually are. In the process of searching, it is helpful to temporarily ignore your preferences. Like, don’t ask what you want 2 + 2 to be, instead ask what 2 + 2 is. Don’t ask whether you want homeopathics to cure cancer, instead ask whether they really do. Don’t ask whether you want democracy or communism to be a solution to all problems of humankind, instead learn the relevant parts of sociology, game theory, and whatever else might be necessary. But after you find out the answers you need, pay attention to your preferences again and do the right thing. “X implies Y” doesn’t tell you what to do, but “X implies Y” together with your preference for Y tells you to do X.
3) People with low-level depression (which seems quite common) have a problem to feel their preferences.
Now add these three things together, and you get something like: “I cannot logically explain what I want, I don’t feel it either, and I was trained to think as if I don’t want anything… hey, maybe I actually don’t want anything!”
Well, that’s wrong. If you really, truly didn’t want anything, you wouldn’t write an article about it, you wouldn’t worry about it, you wouldn’t even get out of your bed in the morning. If you did, your actions clearly contradict your philosophy. Which is quite normal, because people do wrong philosophy all the time.
No seriously, is compulsion to action/passion a generally important criteria people tend to care about?
Do hungry people care about getting some food? Let me think about it for a moment… uhm… yes. Yes, they do!
Do I care about other hungry people getting some food? Well, definitely not in the same way. It’s not like my stomach hurts when they starve. Actually, some people are probably starving to death as I am writing these words, and didn’t even think about it before I started writing this paragraph. But in some other way, I care. How strongly, that depends. Usually, the more I know about something, the more I care, which makes sense from practical perspective, because knowing more about something correlates with being able to do something about it (and what’s the point of feeling bad about something you can’t do anything about), unless this process gets hijacked by media, of course.
Now before someone says “but that means you don’t really care about other people”, no it doesn’t. It only means that I care about them less than I care about myself. But I care about them more than zero, which was the original question. The evidence is both my emotional reaction (I sometimes feel sad about other people suffering) and my behavior (I sometimes help other people).
Also, similar reduction in intensity of caring applies to my future selves, too. I have a preference for the future me not being hungry, but unless I am hungry at this very moment, I don’t feel that preference strongly. But I obviously care about the well-being of my future selves, because I do many things that will benefit them. Otherwise I would quit my job (or just not go there, without sending any notice, because who cares, it’s my future self’s problem) and spend all my savings on immediate pleasures.
But I don’t know what goals to pursue sometimes.
That probably means there are multiple ways how to gain value, and you don’t know which one of them is more efficient.
But again, that actually proves that you care about something, because otherwise you would not worry about not knowing what to do. You would be perfectly okay with simply not doing anything.
Another possible source of confusion is that “doing things that contribute to a goal” feels differently from “having achieved the goal”. For example, cooking feels differently from eating, even if the only way to get food would be to cook something for yourself. In some sense it seems wrong—if the only way to eat is to cook, why don’t I feel the same enthusiasm about cooking as I feel about eating? Evolution gave me some strong feelings about eating, to make me more likely to survive. Why don’t I have similarly strong feelings about things that I logically know contribute to my survival way more than eating a cookie? Yes, that means we cannot blindly follow our feelings, because doing what makes you happy now sometimes makes you more sad tomorrow, and doing some boring thing now can make your tomorrow way better. But when we go against our feelings, we usually do it motivated by some other feelings, like eating one less cookie in order to achieve greater eudaimonia by being healthier.
In situations of uncertainty, it makes sense to usually do what is locally better, but once in a while experiment with something wildly different just to see if you are not stuck in a bad local maximum.
Also, paradoxically, sometimes the most difficult choices are the least important ones. Like, if you have a good option and a bad option, the choice is obvious. And if you have two similarly good options, the choice is more difficult… but on the other hand, even if you don’t make the optimal choice, you still end up with a good option.
I didn’t mean to come across as “not knowing what I want at all”, but it’s more like your last paragraphs on uncertainty (I’ve added a tl;dr at the beginning to help clarify).
1) I have my values, but they are not completely coherent, and I don’t know their extrapolation… Give me immortality, food, and books, and I will gradually find out what else do I want
Thanks to your comment, I think I understand the question I want to ask: What sensations/ feelings do you experience that you use to know “this is what I value”?
I want a world that can be explored. Not one where there is nothing to see (only paperclips), or where it is forbidden to ask questions. Pleasant feelings, of course, but more importantly absence of crippling pain and suffering (minor discomfort is okay, especially when taken voluntarily), and absence of paralysing fear. Autonomy. Progress on personal goals.
Maybe I forgot some imporant things here. And some of these things are interconnected. Like, absence of pain or fear is important per se, but it is also a precondition to joyful exploration. If the exploration is meaningful, it will lead to better knowledge and greater ability. The abilities open new paths for exploration.
I think it is easy to get confused by the following things:
1) I have my values, but they are not completely coherent, and I don’t know their extrapolation. If you ask me about my preference with regards to something I don’t understand yet, I will probably give you a stupid answer. But if I had an opportunity to learn about that thing, to understand it completely, maybe even have some experience with it, I would probably be much more certain about what I want. And luckily, I already have a preference for understanding things, so just give me some more time, please. Also, I already have a preference for having more time. So at least this part of my preferences is coherent. Give me immortality, food, and books, and I will gradually find out what else do I want.
2) I want to find out how things actually are. In the process of searching, it is helpful to temporarily ignore your preferences. Like, don’t ask what you want 2 + 2 to be, instead ask what 2 + 2 is. Don’t ask whether you want homeopathics to cure cancer, instead ask whether they really do. Don’t ask whether you want democracy or communism to be a solution to all problems of humankind, instead learn the relevant parts of sociology, game theory, and whatever else might be necessary. But after you find out the answers you need, pay attention to your preferences again and do the right thing. “X implies Y” doesn’t tell you what to do, but “X implies Y” together with your preference for Y tells you to do X.
3) People with low-level depression (which seems quite common) have a problem to feel their preferences.
Now add these three things together, and you get something like: “I cannot logically explain what I want, I don’t feel it either, and I was trained to think as if I don’t want anything… hey, maybe I actually don’t want anything!”
Well, that’s wrong. If you really, truly didn’t want anything, you wouldn’t write an article about it, you wouldn’t worry about it, you wouldn’t even get out of your bed in the morning. If you did, your actions clearly contradict your philosophy. Which is quite normal, because people do wrong philosophy all the time.
Do hungry people care about getting some food? Let me think about it for a moment… uhm… yes. Yes, they do!
Do I care about other hungry people getting some food? Well, definitely not in the same way. It’s not like my stomach hurts when they starve. Actually, some people are probably starving to death as I am writing these words, and didn’t even think about it before I started writing this paragraph. But in some other way, I care. How strongly, that depends. Usually, the more I know about something, the more I care, which makes sense from practical perspective, because knowing more about something correlates with being able to do something about it (and what’s the point of feeling bad about something you can’t do anything about), unless this process gets hijacked by media, of course.
Now before someone says “but that means you don’t really care about other people”, no it doesn’t. It only means that I care about them less than I care about myself. But I care about them more than zero, which was the original question. The evidence is both my emotional reaction (I sometimes feel sad about other people suffering) and my behavior (I sometimes help other people).
Also, similar reduction in intensity of caring applies to my future selves, too. I have a preference for the future me not being hungry, but unless I am hungry at this very moment, I don’t feel that preference strongly. But I obviously care about the well-being of my future selves, because I do many things that will benefit them. Otherwise I would quit my job (or just not go there, without sending any notice, because who cares, it’s my future self’s problem) and spend all my savings on immediate pleasures.
That probably means there are multiple ways how to gain value, and you don’t know which one of them is more efficient.
But again, that actually proves that you care about something, because otherwise you would not worry about not knowing what to do. You would be perfectly okay with simply not doing anything.
Another possible source of confusion is that “doing things that contribute to a goal” feels differently from “having achieved the goal”. For example, cooking feels differently from eating, even if the only way to get food would be to cook something for yourself. In some sense it seems wrong—if the only way to eat is to cook, why don’t I feel the same enthusiasm about cooking as I feel about eating? Evolution gave me some strong feelings about eating, to make me more likely to survive. Why don’t I have similarly strong feelings about things that I logically know contribute to my survival way more than eating a cookie? Yes, that means we cannot blindly follow our feelings, because doing what makes you happy now sometimes makes you more sad tomorrow, and doing some boring thing now can make your tomorrow way better. But when we go against our feelings, we usually do it motivated by some other feelings, like eating one less cookie in order to achieve greater eudaimonia by being healthier.
In situations of uncertainty, it makes sense to usually do what is locally better, but once in a while experiment with something wildly different just to see if you are not stuck in a bad local maximum.
Also, paradoxically, sometimes the most difficult choices are the least important ones. Like, if you have a good option and a bad option, the choice is obvious. And if you have two similarly good options, the choice is more difficult… but on the other hand, even if you don’t make the optimal choice, you still end up with a good option.
I didn’t mean to come across as “not knowing what I want at all”, but it’s more like your last paragraphs on uncertainty (I’ve added a tl;dr at the beginning to help clarify).
Thanks to your comment, I think I understand the question I want to ask: What sensations/ feelings do you experience that you use to know “this is what I value”?
Curiosity, joy, safety, growth...
I want a world that can be explored. Not one where there is nothing to see (only paperclips), or where it is forbidden to ask questions. Pleasant feelings, of course, but more importantly absence of crippling pain and suffering (minor discomfort is okay, especially when taken voluntarily), and absence of paralysing fear. Autonomy. Progress on personal goals.
Maybe I forgot some imporant things here. And some of these things are interconnected. Like, absence of pain or fear is important per se, but it is also a precondition to joyful exploration. If the exploration is meaningful, it will lead to better knowledge and greater ability. The abilities open new paths for exploration.